You Do Not Talk About Fight Club

I was looking out of our living room windows last night, enjoying the snowy park across the street, when I saw a family with two tiny little girls in front of our building; they were all bundled up, and very cute. I was in a sort of dreamy trance, watching one pick up snow and screech, while the other one held onto her mom. I thought they were adorable, and wondered how cold it was outside.

Much like in a dream or a movie, everything slowed down, and I became hyper-aware of every sound and movement. I saw one of the hood rats from behind our house lurking by the fence, which runs along our high-traffic street; he was turning in a circle, bending to pick something up. I saw a blue car come down the the street, going approximately 25 miles an hour. I heard the Esq talking with Whoreleen on the phone, and even his speech was slow and tempered in my ears. My entire body was prickly, and the hairs on my neck were standing up with a vengeance. The family, hood rat, and car were at the same place when the car screeched to a halt on the ice. I realized at that point I wasn’t breathing. A bigger Asian man got out of the car, came around, walked up the stairs to the hood rat, and pushed him on the ground; apparently, although I hadn’t seen it, the hood rat had thrown an icy snowball at his car, and made quite the impact.

All of a sudden, every car door opened, and three grown men got out; the hood rat was yelling, and down the path, from the opposite direction, came four hood rats to the rescue. The father of the girls was struggling to keep his family out of the melee, but I lost track of one of the little ones. TEN MEN were pushing, shoving, shouting, throwing punches, holding each other back, jumping on each other–and I was saying, “No. No. No! NO! OH MY GOD, NO!” when I saw the little girls intersecting with these two oblivious men who were screaming and punching each other. The guys hadn’t even noticed the family, who were caught in the middle–I thought the little girls were going to get hurt. I kept yelling the word ‘NO’ as I threw open our front door and raced to get downstairs, and in my panic, I forgot to put shoes on. Unfortunately, the 16 stairs from our front door to the 2nd floor are incredibly narrow, and entirely too steep; halfway down, I could feel my forward momentum going too fast, and knew I was going to fall on my face… so I jumped.

Yeah, I jumped. From like eight feet up, and with all of my weight behind it. In mid-air (switching from the word ‘no’ to ‘FUCK’ in a heartbeat), I realized my left ankle–which has been broken twice–wouldn’t be able to take the extra fifty pounds I’ve resentfully put on in the past two years. So I shifted to the right, and OH. MY. GOD. I landed on my right heel instead, and now I can barely walk on it.

I managed to hobble to our second-story deck, with Cory and Justin right behind me, and screamed as loud as humanly possible, ‘YOU FUCKERS BETTER KNOCK IT OFF, OR WE’RE CALLING THE POLICE!’ They got all up-in-arms, and screamed right back, but kept brawling on the lawn. The Esq was yelling at them, and Cory was trying to talk them down. I managed to see the family, safe on the other side of the street, so at that point, I didn’t care what those douchebags did. I half-heartedly yelled, “Fine, we’re calling the police!” and they kept at it, screaming racial slurs at each other and trying to act all tough. Finally, when we were just going to call 911, they broke it up and went their separate ways, shouting insults at one another and high-fiving their friends.

It was completely irresponsible on everyone’s part. The hood rat shouldn’t have thrown the snowball, the Asian guy shouldn’t have thrown the first punch, and everyone in between should have recognized how vulnerable that family was; I was really worried for their safety, because the man was trying to protect them–but for all those hood rats knew, he could have been a friend from the car. If you’re going to be testicularly-retarded, wait until two innocent little girls go by you on the sidewalk, dicks; it’s the polite thing to do.

Of course, now I feel like a giant idiot for wrecking my foot over something so stupid.

Note to the men on our lawn: Educate yourselves on how to insult someone properly; words, when used correctly, are powerful. But ‘nigga’, ‘spic’, and ‘chink’ are so ten years ago; they don’t even mean anything. They’re practically vintage.

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16 Responses

eehhh, don’t feel like an idiot. As I read the story I was like “goddamn right” and uttered a satisfied “huh” extra-loud so my boyfriend would ask me what I was reading but he didn’t. But to me, that is the way you handle a thing–you were looking out YOUR window, at a potential catastrophe unfolding on YOUR block, yes, now it is your gotdamn bidness. You can’t let fools throw shit and scream and fight or whatever else, and if you have the balls to actually say it to their faces instead of just meekly dialling 911 more power to you.

Not like here where i have quite literally nearly witnessed murders in the street. At a busy train station this dude was about to cut the shit out of this other dude with a broken bottle and everyone just kept blindly on their way without the slightest inclination to become involved because it wasn’t “their business”… this detachment, this apathy is the reason the holocaust happened and it makes me sick. People have learned nothing.

Your story just made me cry…granted, I am a hyper emotional ball of hormones right now, but I feel the tears would have come anyway. I love you and I am sorry for your foot, but you SO did the right thing. I love you for it.

All I can hear is that one song going on in my head “I predict a riot…I predict a riot”. I’m missing out on all the excitement up there…I started dancing, yes, dancing with the dogs I’m watching yesterday (what snow will do to a person stuck in Renton). And yes, you did the right thing and stuff!